


blood in your pen

by orphan_account



Category: Running Man RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 03:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9301751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jisoo tuts, forlorn. “Falling for a loveline ass backwards like this,” she says as explanation, but Jihyo knows full well what they mean. He's the lyricist, the one with blood in his pen, but sheknows; divine irony, poetic justice. She doesn't need to be told, lives and breathes with it every day. “You’re honestly so pitiful.”“Cheers,” Jihyo nods, downs the rest of her shot in one noisy go, doesn't disagree.





	

 

 

 

 

 

“Divine irony,” Jisoo tells her, seven soju shots in, English as poised as the composure Jihyo's lost after the alcohol had acquainted itself to her system. “Poetic justice.”

“What?” Jihyo barks, laughs, all in the same breath. Gets the fresh refill of her drink snorted into her nose, burns hot and painful in the back of her throat.

Jisoo tuts, forlorn. “Falling for a loveline ass backwards like this,” she says as explanation, but Jihyo knows full well what they mean. He's the lyricist, the one with blood in his pen, but she _knows_ ; divine irony, poetic justice. She doesn't need to be told, lives and breathes with it every day. “You’re honestly so pitiful.”

“Cheers,” Jihyo nods, downs the rest of her shot in one noisy go, doesn't disagree.

 

 

 

 

 

What it means:

"We need more segments with you two," Myuk PD says, shifting his eyes away, his medium of apology. "More moments, like old times."

There's a still sort of silence after he finishes speaking. The request isn't unheard of, but it's been a long time since the last one, a different era altogether; back when the two of them weren't as close as they are now, sewn into family tapestry by the thread of seven years and olden, broken bodies; back when he didn't look wrung out Monday after Monday by the mere thought of trying to be funny, like he has been for the last couple of months; back when his presence was just a fleeting afterthought rather than a glaring necessity, when she didn't care about how the bags under his eyes grew darker and deeper every time she saw him, about how she feels progressively lost when she reaches out a hand during taping and finds, more often, that his arm isn't there for her to grab onto, no longer solid and constant like what a skeleton of a team should be.

"We're really that desperate for ratings, huh?" he says, and there's bitterness in his words, but mostly a heavy sense of fatigue. She bows her head. "Isn't it enough that you force us to sit and stand beside each other even now?"

"We're just trying to test the waters," another PD says—newer, unfamiliar, brought in for a variety shake-up. She hasn't gotten many chances to speak to him aside from a few directional tips when filming, a change of a moment's angle from an earnest will to win to a potential gag. "Fans have been asking for a return to the basics, and your loveline is as quintessential as it gets."

"I think it's been played out," Gary says, looks as resolute as he does onstage, working on his music, impossible to differentiate between what's true and the persona he dons. "The fans are smarter than that. I don't want to force anything just when I'm about to leave."

"It's not really forcing things to happen," the PD says, looking at Jihyo this time, as if she was the key for him to relent. She almost laughs, is quite telling of how little everyone knows; they call her indefatigable, but even she bends to some degree, is malleable when needs to be, when the situation calls for it. Kang Gary—Kang Gary does what Kang Gary wants. Pulling laughs, writing songs. Leaving. She holds no sway over him. After all is said and done, she's no factor in any of his decisions. "It's really more of an embellishment of something that's already there."

She _has_ to laugh at that. "Sorry," she says, when everyone who's present turns to look at her in question. She covers her mouth with a hand, swallows down another chortle, the tension that builds in her throat when Gary doesn't even so much as twitch her way. "I think he's right. It'd be really inorganic. The fans will clue into it really quickly."

"We won't force you, then," New PD says in finality, "But just think about it," and then he walks away. Myuk PD sighs, stutters on a step, conflicted, before following the others' leave.

Taping begins. For all of his talk, Gary plays right into what they beseech; calls her first for his song, reprimands Crush for trying to flirt with her, comes to their site before Jaesuk does, before he goes anywhere else. Pulls out the jealousy card when he plays the recording of their conversation and hears her giggle when she introduces Crush, subtle enough that it looks authentic rather than an exaggerated bit for the cameras.

Or she guesses, when she watches it air on TV almost two weeks after it's filmed. It's almost believable. If not for the insight she holds, being involved, and for the irritation that flashes through his face before the scene cuts, when his friend asks him if he's jealous, the quickening of her pulse would be more warranted, the lurch in her stomach owing to something concrete, a feeling that was real, returned.

 

 

 

 

 

(How she lives it:

"I don't mind," she tells him at dinner, after filming ends. He's sitting beside her today. The limitations of being in a loveline apparently included not associating with each other in public for more than a minute at a time, only enough for a mild greeting, so just him being this close to her was already an exception in itself. "Playing it up a bit. If that's something you're worried about."

"Hmm?" he answers as he chews on a piece of meat, fresh off the grill, eyes focused down on the bright LED screen on his lap. He's been spending more time on his phone recently, she's noticed. Settling business affairs through text, making the necessary calls for a new LeeSsang album, typing up spur of the moment lyrics on his internal memo in the middle of taping. She'll miss seeing it; the bullheaded determination he has for his sole passion, how it burns quietly when everything else about him, everything else he's known for, is loud, blaring.

"What the PDs told us this morning," she repeats, when he turns his head towards her. "I'm okay with it."

"Ah," he says, finally paying attention. She doesn't miss the way his nose wrinkles for a second, like the char on the beef, the meat of what she'd said, had left a bad aftertaste. "I'm not."

Her eyes sting, all of a sudden. Probably the accumulation of smoke from the long line of grills down the table getting to her, she thinks, and then a soft,  _Liar_ , in her own voice, trailing the thought. "So it's true? I'm really that boring now?"

"No," he says, voice gentler, mouth twisting up in a sheepish smile. "Don't listen to the netizens. They're just Kwangsoo fans who're upset that you beat him up so much," he takes his Halyang cap off, weaves his fingers through his hair, puts it on backwards. One of the snaps isn't secured. She tamps down on the urge to reach a hand over and fix it for him. "Can't relate, though. I enjoy him a little bit roughed up."

"Pervert," she says with a roll of her eyes, but the corners of his lips pull up higher, and she smiles right back. One of the audio guys on his other side taps at his shoulder, and they engage in conversation for a couple of minutes, leaves her to eat in silence, forces her to think.

When he pivots back to face his plate, it's almost out of her control when she asks, "Is there a reason you're not okay with it?"

"You're oddly persistent about it," he says, laughs, and she flinches into her bowl of rice, embarrassed. She doesn't care ( _liar_ ), but she is curious. He's never been the one to turn away from an opportunity for screen time, because she'd always beaten him to the rejection, time and again. "I don't know, just—expectations, right? What you've always said?"

 _It's tiring_ , she'd told him—the PDs, everyone who could know, who might understand—four years back, when she'd had enough.  _Burdensome. I don't want to pretend that I care about something just because everyone else does. I don't want this following me in everything I do. I don't want to be tied to you for the rest of my life._

 _You're right,_ he'd answered, patient and doleful, hadn't taken it personally. She had wished he did, back then, was angry enough to want to hurt him, to make him feel like he was at fault just by being around, but he'd never taken the bait.  _I'm sorry._ He'd never stopped continuing with the role, though, and she'd realized it was one of those things she had to get used to, for her career, whether she liked it or not. She grew tolerant, eventually; the more she did, the more he'd become less sincere, less motivated, and it was almost a reprieve when episodes would pass and not one time would there be a suggestive subtitle within their frame of shot, having had done nothing worthy enough of making the edit.

Almost. Because they're friends now, on better terms than they ever were before, but she'd always felt something missing between them, a relationship incomplete, vital pieces lost in the formation of a puzzle.

"Don't get me wrong, I love you," he continues breezily, as if he professes it every day, but she feels suffocated, something clenching uncomfortably in her chest. "I love all of you guys, just not—not enough to not go crazy when I have to tell people even twenty years down the road that I'm not getting married to you, or that Ha Ha's not gonna be my best man at our wedding, or that I don't feel betrayed by Jongkook-hyung because he made a move on you, or that the songs on my album aren't about my unrequited love for you," he fiddles with the brim of his cap again, but he doesn't take it off. Doesn't look at her, either, but she doesn't want him to, anyways. "Having to live up to something like that—it gets to you, eventually."

 _Has it gotten to you yet, Kang Gary?_ she wants to ask, but it's useless. The way he checks out of participating in a group barb, the reality that he's leaving; the way his eyes don't automatically go to her any longer, even with the cameras trained on his every reaction, the PDs coaching him from behind the fourth wall; they were all answer enough.

"I'm sorry," she says instead, reminiscent of years before, their positions switched.

"Why are you apologizing?" he says, puts the newly cooked squid on her plate, purposeful, the joke living on, and everything inside her inexplicably aches. "I should be the one saying sorry. You seemed pretty into the idea, for once."

"You're leaving soon, aren't you?" she answers, tries to sound as unaffected by it as possible. "I just thought it'd be a nice way to close off, to come full circle."

"That's true," he hums, and then says nothing else in regards to it for the remainder of the dinner, renders her words unsaid. Unfinished, like everything else about them, everything else she's thought too much of for a better part of a year.

She hugs him goodbye after they all finish eating, and then watches as he hugs everyone else. Everyone lingers longer nowadays, with Gary, just that much closer to the day when he'll tell them goodbye and won't show up the next week, the week after, a month later. She's not overly sentimental—none of them are, least of all him, but she's almost angry that he doesn't seem to care, walks around on- and off-set as if there's nothing he would miss. No one.

"I'll miss him a lot too," Kwangsoo pipes up, as if on cue, somehow ending up beside her in the commotion of bidding their farewells. She clears her throat, ashamed to have been caught staring, but Kwangsoo only looks sympathetic, like he knows what she's hiding, if there was even anything to hide. "Oh, noona—I get it."

The irony: she doesn't, but at least someone else seems to.)

 

 

 

 

 

She cries during his last episode. Tells herself not to, even declares it for broadcast, but when people say she doesn't listen to anyone, that includes herself, most of the time. Her eyes burn from the moment they roll film, but she manages to hold it in until they tell her to give him a parting message.  

"I'm sad to see you leave," she says, the crack in her voice honest, the aversion of her gaze just as, "But I support you in all of your endeavours. Good luck."

He only smiles in response, bow furtive and awkward, and Jongkook and Jaesuk are quick to diffuse the solemnity by cracking a one-two punch of a Sad/Bad Jihyo joke. 

" _Mondays without him will feel so empty from now on_ ," Jongkook says, volume raised in a horrible imitation of her, and she half-heartedly denies it.

"I heard her say something else," Jaesuk refutes, " _Is Gary out of his fucking mind_ _?_ " and everyone barks in boisterous laughter, no need for any confirmation. It's what she's known for. An unpredictable temper, streaks of rage periodically revealed to manufacture everyone's amusement. It's easy enough to guess which of the two the audience would believe. It wouldn't matter which, either way; both had been, in differing circumstances, unflaggingly true.

They eat, after that. He sits beside her again, but she knows it's for the cameras today. One last time. She rubs a hand against her chest, trying to soothe an idiopathic pain that still won't go away.

"I never took you to be as good an actress as everyone said until back there in the studio," he whispers to her, when the VJs take a break from filming to join them and eat, low enough that their mics won't pick up on the sound. "Those almost looked like real tears to me."

Her head snaps up towards him, battle ready—she  _cried_ for him in public, in front of all those cameras, to be shown to the dwindling millions of people who still stayed tuned to a show past its prime, and that's what he tells her?—but his eyes are crinkled around the sides when she gets a proper look at him, smile and demeanour unusually tender, and she realizes he's teasing her.

"You're cruel, oppa," she mumbles, annoyed by how sensitive she's gotten with his departure, but she eases up when she figures that he has too, on some level. This was his way of showing it, making jokes. Pretending.

"I didn't know you cared, Mong Ji," he says, mischief alight in his tone. He stretches across her to reach for something on the grill, her eyes following the movement. Watches as the sleeve of his sweater dips lightly into his small cup of soy sauce, stain stark and noticeable against the white cloth on his elbow; watches as his expression settles, peaceful with his meal; watches the light cast even deeper shadows under his cheekbones, more prominent with the fluorescence overhead; watches to take her fill, because it hits her that this is probably the last time she'll get to be this close to him without the excuse of a business relationship, without the need for a script and an order to take his hand.

 _I don't_ , she would have said, if this was weeks, months, years ago. But he's leaving, and the thought that any of this, right now, was fabricated for the fans strikes something fierce and searing in the depths of her gut, and she's had enough.

"I do," she says, after a while, and the preceding pause probably alerts him that she's being serious, his brows knitting together, his smile falling. "A lot. I'll miss you."

There's another pause. He chews on some rice, slowly, as if thinking over what he's going to say, before murmuring, with more warmth than she's ever heard him use with her, "Off the record—I'll miss you too."

And again, that's that. Some of the VJs return to taping, and Gary gets embroiled in some men's only discussion with the rest of the guys, alive once more for the cameras. She shrinks back in her seat at the end of the table, but there's a pleasant frisson buzzing underneath her skin, in the outline of his words:  _I'll miss you too_. For the first time since she's found out, she's almost content with the truth of his going. There it is again—that almost.

But he'll miss her, he'd said. Fuck the fans, the expectations; let that be their legacy.

 

 

 

 

 

Turns out it isn't, because he's back on the show the next Monday, not even given more than a week to distance himself from anything related to Running Man, his last episode barely even aired for 24 hours to the masses that still cared.

"Last week, I cried a lot when we said goodbye," she says to no one in particular as she runs to meet him for the day's mission, babbling incessantly to calm her nerves. When they told her a few days ago that Gary was going to be guesting for their next episode, she'd almost stormed towards Myuk PD to yank at his hair for maligning her again on national television. "It's so embarrassing to see him again." Only this time, she has more at stake than what the viewers think she weighs. She runs faster regardless.

When she gets inside and sees him at the end of her direct path, her anxiety disappears, and instinct kicks back in. "Kang Gary!"

"Jihyo-yah," he roars out, surprised. Or maybe not, because everyone else had gone before her, so surely he knows she was next. The way his hands fly up to grip hers, when she wraps his arms around his neck, though—it's natural, the hesitance in how he tightens his hold, unsure of what to do with her, as real as he's ever gotten. Knows this for certain, from prior experience.

She does well, she thinks, plays it cute with her embarrassment and chimes in seamlessly when Gary relays how she had cried more out of anger when he'd met them in private. He's more awkward than she is, actually. It relieves her, not being the only one lost, after everything. Not being the only one who doesn't know where to go with their dynamic, now that he's gone and doesn't need to ham it up for the general public.

But old habits die hard. He resorts back to pining, persistent Gary when she asks him for money, offering to give her his whole wallet full of cash when she'd already pocketed his 5,000 won bill.

"Jihyo, will you marry me?" he demands more than asks, nudging his wallet into her open palm. She pushes his hand away, forces a laugh, but the disappointment runs through her like clockwork. The words he tells her, the things he offers out loud: they were all for show, from curtains drawn to curtains closed.

Which is why, partly out of vindication, partly out of the need to entertain, she turns him down cold when he asks her if she wants to revive the Monday Couple. "No," she says firmly, and starts singing his song without interlude, giving him no chance to pretend that she'd hurt him. She's done falling for tricks like that. She's always been a fast learner, but nothing makes a lesson stick harder than seven years of reaping from your own ignorance.

She passes the mission, and she hugs him again to say goodbye. "I thought you were singing it for me," he laments, but he stands up with her genially when she moves towards the door. "Now that you're done with this, you're just going to leave me now? Are you even going to call me the next time you record the show?"

"Just put your outfit on already," she banters back, hand extending reflexively to manhandle him into submission, but she startles when his touch reaches her first, thick fingers wrapping definitively around the perimeter of her hand.

He walks her down to street level, and he doesn't let go once along the way from his studio on fourth. "How have you been?" he asks quietly, when they're far enough away from either sets of crew stationed on either floor. "Seriously."

"You just saw me a week ago," she says, because it's the truth, and because she doesn't know why her welfare should matter to him so greatly now.

"Doesn't mean I can't ask," he says, with a small chuckle, but he looks slightly put off when she chances a glance up at him, doesn't talk for the next couple of steps.

She immediately feels guilty. Here he is, trying, and there she was, turning him away again. A cycle, and they're back to square one. She's tired, dizzy from always going in circles, so she decides to break the chain, says, "I'm okay," stops briefly to ponder over her words, before adding, "Filming's weird without you."

"You'll get used to it. Like with Joongki," he says, and she's glad to see that he's perked up a bit at her answer. He descends the stairs leisurely, like he's taking his time, and she has no choice but to match his pace. "Just a little bit of self-conditioning. You guys will be fine without me."

"It's different," she says automatically, and she almost regrets it when he looks at her inquiringly, eyebrows raised, lines of age creasing his forehead. She doesn't get to explain how exactly it's different, anyways, because the crew from above catches up to them, can feel them filming ardently at their entwined fingers. She tries to tug her hand out of his, suddenly self-conscious, panicky—they'll surely show this in the edit, a last attempt at milking their relationship to the last drop—but he only tightens his hold. She stops fighting, has herself resigned to this.

They reach ground floor, and he finally releases her hand. "Get back safely, Mong Ji," he bids, says her onscreen nickname with a lilt close enough to fondness. She nods wordlessly, still wary of this recent development, calling her by her coined name in private; of his intentions, if even now that she's leaving, surely won't be seeing him for a long time—he left for a reason, after all, and even the PDs knew their limits, knew better than to call him up regularly to appear on the show—he was still angling every move for the cameras.

She steps out of the building, but not before hearing him tell Sung Gyu, "You'll tell them to cut that last part out, right? On the stairs?" all beneath his breath, mic enveloped in between his fingers, blocked, body out of the camera's frame. "Please." Like he means it.

She rushes her walking, gets herself out of earshot. When the feeling of his hand against hers starts diminishing against the cool autumn air, she closes it into a fist and digs her nails into her skin, as if it were enough to cage the sensation in.

 

 

 

 

 

It's not that she'd expected the news, but she's also not that surprised. Being a woman in the variety industry—being a woman in _any_ industry, actually, but more so hers—you never garnered the respect that men did. You were dispensable, only worth as much as the youth of your looks, or how long you were able to fake the unwavering bubbliness that the female gender was supposedly born innate with, or for carrying on a loveline that was as animated as the dead. That's always been how it is. She's known this since doing the first two years of the show—gaining new fans for her skill, her audacity, only to be lost after one off day, an exposed relationship with someone she actually liked, as if she had no right to that once she'd signed the contract, blood and sweat as her ink—and she's never let herself forget it.

Still, she'd have thought that after seven years, they'd at least give her a warning. Just as loyal and hardworking as the rest of the cast, if not more, and even then she wasn't worth that. She faults herself for asking for far too much, all the damn time.

She locks herself in her apartment for the rest of the day, doesn't entertain the knocks on her door even when they become barreling, force shuts her phone by taking the battery out, right in the middle of an incoming call from her manager. She cries for a bit, and then cries some more, until her head starts hurting and her eyes become swollen enough to close on their own, and she falls asleep in the middle of her living room floor.

When she comes to, there's clarity in her mind to combat the bleariness of sleep. She slots the battery of her phone back in, turns it on, and the first thing she does after its initial startup is to search herself up on the internet.

 _Song Jihyo fired from Running Man!_ the first headline reads, which she already knows. Obviously. Scroll.  _Kim Jongkook and Song Jihyo to leave Running Man, Kang Hodong in talks to join in their stead_ , she feels aggravation, at first, renewed—not even a day, and names were already out there for their replacement—but then shame overtakes everything else, because she didn't even think to check up on Jongkook after finding out, too engrossed with herself to even think that someone else was experiencing the same drama that she was going through. She makes a mental note to call him, right after the reminder to ring up her manager to let her know that she wasn't thinking of dying anytime soon.

Scroll.  _Kang Gary deletes all posts on his Instagram page after news breaks out of ex-Running Man costars Kim Jongkook and Song Jihyo's firing_ , is the next title, and it piques enough of her interest to open the article and follow the provided link to his account to check if he really did. All she sees is a blank, white page even after the loading symbol on her screen goes away, so she guesses it's true even if she doesn't know what it means.

Her phone rings, and it's him. Gary. She hovers over the answer button, reluctant—she really needed to talk to her manager first, probably. What do you do when you've just been fired?—but she's somehow swiped her thumb across the screen before she'd even finalized her decision, her phone already glued to her ear. "Kang Gary?" It's decision enough.

"Jihyo," he says, and he's audibly surprised that she'd answered, pitch raised and honorifics dropped from the end of her name. "Mong Ji. Hey."

"Stop," she says, too sharp, the sound of anything generated by the show making her mad all over again. It's not his fault. Wishing for justice, wanting for things she couldn't have—that's all on her.

She takes a deep breath. "Sorry. Just—can you not call me that right now?"

"Okay," he answers, voice soft through the receiver. "Jihyo. How are you?"

"How do you think?" she snaps, before she can rein it in, and she closes her eyes, sets her forehead against the freezing surface of her coffee table. "Shit. Sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he says, as accommodating as always. Jaesuk and Sukjin would've coddled her like a child, Jongkook wouldn't have said anything—not that she expected him to, in his circumstance—Ha Ha would've yelled at her to not take her anger out on him, and Kwangsoo would've failed to hide the hurt in his voice even though he'd try. It's good that it was Gary she'd answered. He had balance. If nothing else, she was at least granted that.  _They_ at least had that.

"You deleted all your pictures off Instagram," she says, because she doesn't know how she is, and it's the first thing that comes to mind for an answer.

"Yeah," he says, and he's oddly shy when he does, "Fans were flooding my comments, demanding that I do something about what happened. As if I could, you know?"

She nods, even if he can't see. "Sorry," she says again.

"Don't be," he's quick to say, determined to the point that it almost sounds like scolding, "I'm not annoyed—I mean, I am, but not that they were commenting. Mostly because the more I read their comments, the more it pissed me off that I really couldn't do anything about it."

"What would you do?" she asks. There's a notification for another call, but she ignores it, doesn't want to hang up, doesn't want to put him on hold, afraid that he'll leave. Again. 

"I wouldn't have taken you off the cast at all," he says, low in vexation, "Fuck them, honestly. Everybody knows you and Jongkook-hyung are the only ones who actually still try to win on that show."

She laughs, can't help it. Even like this, he still makes her laugh. "Thanks," she says, "But I meant me. What would you do if you were me."

"At least I made you laugh," he says, sounds pleased with himself, exactly like how he is when she calls him handsome for the pretense of flirting back. But it's different, as well; there are no mics this time, no cameras to catch his expression, and she's not paranoid enough to think that her phone's been tapped, or that there's a video crew at wherever he is right now, taping his end of the call. She hears him breathe over the line, before he says, "I don't know. But whatever it is you choose, I'll support you."

"If I chose to leave now? Without filming a goodbye episode?" she pitches, and he whistles, almost as if he's impressed.

"They have it coming to them," he says, then clarifies, because the cast and crew were still family, and it wasn't any of their fault either, "The company. If I could wipe mine off of broadcast, I would. I regret ever paying them dust."

She smiles. "If I made a public statement cursing them off?" she tries, feeling slightly playful now. Better.

"I'll be the one to read it to the press," he says eagerly, "I'd even rap it—wait, now that you say that, you wanna write a diss track?" She laughs again, and he laughs along with her. "Fuck it, let's write a diss track."

They muck about with ideas for the next half hour, going back and forth with lines, rich in expletives and reputation ruining information. She can rap as well as she can sing and dance—which is to say, absolutely not—but he cheers her on through the phone, beatboxing to her stunted flow of lyrics, scribbled across a stray piece of tissue she finds on her table, lying about from the takeout she ordered yesterday.

"What should we call it?" she asks, once they manage to get one verse down. "SBS Sucks?"

"Lying Man," he says, accent rich on his consonants, endearing. "Part One. MC Song featuring Mr. Gae."

"That's so obvious," she says, but she's biting her lip, stifling another laugh.

"That's hip hop for you, MC Song," he says, clicking his tongue in mock dismay. "When your targets are as dumb as they are, you have to lay it out step by step, or else they won't get it."

"Oh, okay Rap Guru," she says, and laughs anyways. "What's next?"

"We record," he says, still fully engaged with her suggestion. "Gil's been trying to find new talent to sign. This could be your demo, kill two birds with one stone."

"Put a good word in for me," she says, then thinks about how it's really killing three birds with one stone, because it gives her a new job, right after losing Running Man. She stops smiling, and the line goes stale, Gary somehow picking up enough on her mood to stay silent, waits for her to speak again. "Seriously, what—what's next?"

"I don't know," she hears him say, after a couple moments of static, and she draws her legs up to her chest, presses her lips against her kneecap to choke on an errant sob. "I'm sorry."

She cries again, pathetically—what that stupid show has done to her, what she's sacrificed, and it ends in this way—but he stays on the line with her the whole time, keeping quiet all the while and letting her cry undisturbed.

When she settles down after a number of minutes, embarrassment fuels her once again. "God, I'm so sorry—"

"Can you stop that?" he says, but it's not clipped, almost even kind. "I called you because I wanted to see how you were. And I see. And I'm here. Okay?"

"Okay," she says, not really making any sense to her, but she owes him as much as to agree without question. "Thank you."

" _If you miss us, come back any time_ ," he recites, the closing words from the goodbye letter she'd written him. "This is me coming back." He doesn't say he misses her, but he doesn't need to. For once, she understands what he says. What he doesn't.

He hums the chorus of  _The Girl Who Can't Breakup, The Guy Who Can't Leave_ , over and over and over, but she listens to it raptly, phone screen sweating from the heat of her cheek, refusing to put it down. She's never told him this, but she really could play that song on repeat for the rest of her life without ever getting sick of it. It's as close to flawless that a tune can get, for her. They play it as a backing track for a good portion of their moments, but it's alright. It's not their song, anyways. Maybe they don't really have one, and that's fine too.

Or maybe, she thinks, as she lets the sound of it carry her back to sleep, theirs was still unwritten, pen at the ready to release its ink.

 

 

 

 

 

She wakes up the next day with a headache, more than a dozen missed phone calls from her manager, an estimate forty from some nameless others, and the tissue of lyrics stuck to her forehead.

 _jihyo!!! you better answer your phone tomorrow, or i swear im calling in the fire department_. _sbs--_ _theyre bastards. good night_ , she reads, the last text her manager sent her. She hushes out a laugh, finds her voice hoarse, and then types her reply as she stands up to get a drink of water.

 _im glad youre alive_ , her manager responds, not a second wasted.  _now drive HURRIEDLY but SAFELY to the agency and we'll talk_

She gets ready, washes her face and brushes her teeth and puts on makeup, even rallies her hair into a presentable shape. While she pulls out clothes to wear from her closet, she decides to text Gary:  _thank you for last night, oppa_.

She puts her phone down on her bed, goes outside to collect some things to put in her bag. When she spots the marked up tissue still on the table, she walks towards it, picks it up, folds it into a tiny square piece, and slips it inside one of the card pockets in her wallet.

 _on call like a taxi driver_ , is his response, when she returns to her room to add her phone as the last needed essential in her bag, not before checking for any text message alerts. She laughs, gets the reference, and she smiles wider when she finishes reading his text completely,  _i have a feeling that i'll see you on monday :thumbsup:._

She can only hope. 

 

 

 

 

 

The next time they do see each other, it's at another cast gathering, after the six of them had gone in for talks about the future of the program. Everyone was adamant; _we end this together_. Embarrassingly enough, she cries _again_ , right in front of all of them, producers and higher-ups alike. Kwangsoo shifts around restlessly in his seat beside her, leaning forward and back in choppy intervals, and she realizes that he's trying to cover for her when one of the executives asks him if he could kindly move his arm away so that he could look at Jihyo-ssi when he's talking to her. It only makes her want to cry harder, but the reprimanded look on Kwangsoo's face keeps it at bay, both from amusement and the strong desire to not waste the very best of his efforts.

"It's settled then," the SBS representative says, when discussion ends, three hours and some minutes later, and heaves out a weary sigh. "We end the show. The last episode will air in February of the incoming year."

They shake everyone's hands, because they're still professionals. She shares a smug smirk with Jongkook over some of their heads, though, but it turns sad quickly enough when they all step out of the conference room. It's their final exit together, probably, their last program meeting on this large a scale. Another goodbye, as queasy as these things often made her feel.

They go to a restaurant close by, too tired and hungry to seek real gourmet. The atmosphere's laden, as sombre as it was when Gary had announced that he was leaving, but it feels notched up to ten times worse. They place their orders and wait in a charged silence, and she breaks each of their chopsticks off for them to pass the time.

Gary turns up right before the first bowl of _jjamppong_ is served. "What's up, MC Song," is his opening remark, in an exaggerated mouthing of an English greeting, and she laughs so hard she snorts, has half of the guys looking at her in concern, has the other half sliding their chairs away from her in fear. 

"The hell did you do, hyung?" Ha Ha asks, wide-eyed and mouth gaping, part of the group who'd backed away. She goes on laughing, leans her head against Gary's shoulder when he takes a seat next to her. Coincidence, habit—she can't tell anymore, doesn't really care.

Gary shrugs, jolting her head up with the motion, "I just came. How should I know?"

"She's really lost her mind," someone mutters somewhere to her left, and then a commotion starts, people defending her right to go crazy, considering, and then the opposition arguing that she'd always been crazy, had only kept it dormant when the cameras were rolling, sometimes not even then.

In the midst of it all, her laughter dies down to a muted giggle, and she hears Gary ask, "You good now, Mong Ji?"

"Yeah," she says, with no prior deliberation. She sweeps her eyes down the table, person to person, before fixing them to her right, where he was waiting on her for an answer. "This is all I need."

And then he smiles  _at_ her—like he's properly looking, not just throwing it in her direction and hoping for it to hook and catch the viewers with a pull of the fishing line—and that. _That_ 's what it is that they're missing.

The stutter of her heart, like she's preparing for a race, adrenaline flowing when he taps her cheek with the back of his two fingers—well. That was just an added bonus.

 

 

 

 

 

(He was right. She checks her phone's calendar later that evening, on her way home, having had lost track of the days with everything that's happened and needing to return back to some kind of organizational scheme, now that it's all been concluded.

It's Monday.)

 

 

 

 

 

 _so you and jongkook-hyung, huh_ , he texts, _you said_ _no one could ever take my place_.

Their annual New Year's predictions episode had just aired, and the fortune teller had told Jongkook that she was his soulmate, the perfect rich girl for him to wed, or something ridiculously pandering to that effect. Jaesuk had fanned the flames, claiming that the two of them should just get married, in jest. It was still suspicious, because she didn't see a purpose to pushing another approved loveline—as popular as her and Jongkook's pairing already was—when Gary had just left two months ago, and with the show ending in even less time than that. 

"Just ignore him," Jongkook had said, unfazed, when she'd asked him about it, and she'd just chalked it down to Jaesuk being Jaesuk, always wanting to stir up drama for the maximum laughs, for the good of the show. Until the bitter end.

 _jealous?_ she types, and then deletes, because that's not how they usually text. They don't text much at all, really, aside from milestone greetings like album releases or casting announcements and Running Man related topics that were mostly just group conversations that were being passed on to the next person. But something's changed, after that night, not anything she can pinpoint, and she guesses that this is just the natural progression of what they are, what they could be, after the set lights have dimmed down and the slate's been clapped for the close.

 _it's called multitasking_ , she types instead.  _you as one task, jongkook-oppa as the other_. She hits send before she can second-guess herself.

She stands up to cook herself some food, her phone following her like a filial son.  _so you're doing me right now?_ is his next text, and she blushes despite herself, can't even blame the stove for the sudden heat because she'd just turned it on to its lowest setting.

She's heard him be suggestive to her before, too many times to count, but it had always been on screen. This was private, intimate, forward in a way he's never been, with her. Even in the beginning, when she—and everyone else with eyes and basic arithmetic skills—could tell that he was genuinely interested in something more, he had kept his distance, never breaching any lines, keeping well within his boundaries. She doesn't know how much of that was because of her, being unresponsive to the point of being perniciously hostile, and how much of it was because of him, stable in managing his self-control, satisfied with the way things were between them at that point in time. 

It doesn't matter. This was a fresh start, a blank slate.  _kang gary, are you propositioning me?_ she replies, not holding back on a smile.

 _dirty mong ji_ , is all he says in return. She waits for an addendum, but it doesn't come, so she goes ahead with sending her next reply.

_i already have a man, you know._

_who_ _??_ , is his swift response,  _don't tell me it's jongkook. seriously._

 _it's not_ , she sends, with a small lag in between his last text. _i don't think it's_ _someone you know_.

She waits a minute, then five, then ten. No answer. She chops up some vegetables, brings out the leftover meat from a home-held New Year's party one of her friends had thrown, and she mixes them all in the pan with some oil for a simple stir-fry.

When she finishes, he still hasn't replied. She starts eating, gnaws on a broccoli sprout in her worry, but then her phone buzzes against the counter, forces her to masticate committedly in surprise. She picks it up, unlocks it without reading the text preview. She takes another bite of her food. Sauce. She forgot to put in some sauce. Hoisin? No. Gochujang, but she was already out of that.

 _are you happy?_ she finally reads, after stalling nonsensically for a few more minutes, building a grocery list that she won't even remember come morning.

Is she?  _i don't know_ , she says, and she's serious now, no trace of humour as she types.  _i'm actually not sure if he knows i like him._

_have you told him yet?_

_no_ , she starts, as a feeler, and then sends the rest of what she wants to say, no going back.  _he left before i could tell him. quit our job, said he wanted to focus more on his music._

She sets her phone down, screen facing marble. Puts away the rest of what she'd cooked in a tupperware, along with what remains of her meal, suddenly not hungry anymore. She washes her dishes, wipes down the edges of her stove, the surface of the kitchen counter that she'd eaten on. Dries her plates, and then her utensils, and then her pots, and then stores them in their respective cabinets, taking the time to be meticulous in her arrangement.

It all takes her an hour when it would usually take her twenty minutes, but he still doesn't reply within that window of time. No acceptance, no rejection. Not even an acknowledgment, no _thanks for the thought_ , not even one of his dry  _okay_ s.

Fine, she thinks, immeasurably irate, if that's how it's going to be.

 _it's you_ , she messages, because she's disappointed, which makes her furious, and she's reckless when she's furious, so she resolves, because her inner wiring, devoid of any common sense in her current state, was telling her to do so, to make it even clearer for the both of them,  _i like you, kang gary_ , and then.

And then. She stops waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

She sees Joongki first, talking to the VJs he knew from when he was still starring, Kwangsoo standing in between the two sides like a misplaced translator. The grin he wears is exalted, obviously happy to end the show with a close friend, with everyone back together again, but she also sees that it's jittery, the closer she gets, like if he'd gritted down harder on his molars a tooth would pop off, and then the whole structure of the smile would crumble down in its wake.

"Noona!" Kwangsoo calls out when he spots her across the room, flailing his long arms around like windmills, creating new wave patterns to draw her closer in their direction. "Jihyo-noona!"

"Stop yelling," she chides mildly, pinches the back of his neck and earns herself a yelp. She smiles up at Joongki, "Hey, Prince of China."

"I abdicate that to Kwangsoo," he says with a grimace, before beaming back at her. "How've you been?"

"Alright," she says, and she has been, truly. Not great, not good, but alright. She'll take what she can get. "It's odd, isn't it? That this is the last episode?"

"It's weird for me too," he nods agreeably, rubs his fingers placatingly against the spot that she'd tweaked on Kwangsoo's nape, when his pained whining refuses to abate. "And I was only on for a year. I can't even imagine what it feels like for you guys."

It feels exactly like how'd Kwangsoo looked during the Entertainment Awards, an endless prickling of tears and ungraceful sniffling even as he receives honours for the commendable performance that he's—that  _they've_ , Kwangsoo had insistently disclaimed, they did this  _together_ —put out for the past year, the last six more. She'd cried then, too, listening to him thank all of them for everything they've done, but that's old news to her now, has accepted it as a default reaction to anything revolving around the ending of the show.

She's already sworn off on proclaiming that she won't cry for this episode, because lies like that have never really worked out for her, historically, and she thinks that she can probably get away with it this time; Kwangsoo looks close to sobbing now—when he starts, he doesn't stop, and even the most hypermasculine men in their cast weren't that immune to seeing emotion of that intensity without becoming at least a little bit symptomatic.

The rest of the group comes soon after that, and then Lizzy arrives a few minutes later, apologizing for being tardy due to some conflicting idol schedules, but she isn't even the last to show up. Jihyo doesn't say who, though, doesn't say it out loud. She's not supposed to notice these things. She  _doesn't_ notice these things. Like she's said, she's stopped waiting.

But he comes. And he greets everyone enthusiastically, except for her. He sidles between her and Joongki in the final line-up before the VJs turn their cameras on, and he gives her a dismissive, "Hey," not even sparing her a glimpse.

Well, good. She could do that too. Anything he could do, she could always do better. "Hey," she says flatly, and then ignores him for the rest of taping.

Through some kind of divine intercession, she picks out Sukjin's Running Ball from the bag to become her partner. Most of the PDs look crushed, she knows, disappointed that they can't force her and Gary together for one last Monday Couple hurrah. In all the years she's worked with him, she hasn't been as grateful for Jaesuk's clout as she is now; they'd all talked about how the last episode should go, and all of them promised to do their best to outperform their own standards for variety as long as nothing would be scripted by the PDs. A lot of the producers had resisted, saying that that was impossible if they'd wanted a stellar final episode, but Jaesuk himself had put his foot down.

"We film it raw," he'd said with finality, with authority he rarely ever used even with his reputation as the Nation's MC. He was sought after, the most acclaimed comedian, the very first man you thought of when pitching a pilot for a new variety show and needed a host, but he'd almost never used that to his advantage, never demanded anything that was out of the realm of a regular cast member's string of requests. All of his producers were appreciative of that, having to deal with one less diva on a set full of the most entitled TV personalities, sometimes even the most reprehensible characters to ever grace the motherland, lucky to be famous enough to escape the will of the law.

So when Yoo Jaesuk commanded that they film the last episode as it is, as it will go, everyone complied. There was no further argument to be brooked.

They set off. Sukjin and her run around together to find the others' Running Balls, and they're surprisingly the first to arrive at their meeting spot when they've managed to collect one for each name.

"Are you okay?" Sukjin asks, sat down beside her and trying to catch his breath as they wait for the other groups to materialize.

"Yeah," she answers, flattening the creases on the tuck of her shirt, unsuspecting of anything he says. Her and Sukjin have never really been the closest, not like how she is with Kwangsoo or Jongkook, but they respected each other enough to keep out of each other's personal business.

That's why when he broaches the topic, she almost jumps in her chair. "You and Gary—not to pry, but you two seem...tense. More so than usual."

"We're fine," she says, after smoothing out a few more wrinkles on her blouse—this was terrible fabric, for the record, and their sponsors should be ashamed, or sued, or both—and gives Sukjin a mollifying smile. "Just the stress of the final episode getting to me."

"Ah," Sukjin says, but he sounds unconvinced, and if even Sukjin doesn't believe her—that definitely doesn't bode her well. "It's sad, but it's kind of good at the same time. Gives us new opportunities to pursue the things we really want."

He looks at her meaningfully, but she only nods, not really sure of what to say. Sukjin doesn't seem to expect her to answer, anyways, because he pats a fatherly hand on her shoulder, says, "You'll be fine, Jihyo," and ends the conversation there.

Everyone stumbles in eventually, panting from exhaustion, and they reconvene about what to do next. The PDs put them in fighting gear, Jihyo already having a feeling of what it's going to be, but then her and Kwangsoo's names are consecutively picked out of the blower, and she forgets everything else in favour of going to war.

There are a lot of laughs, because Kwangsoo getting hit and slapped and shoved is somehow always good entertainment, but she hugs his arm tightly when they all walk to their final destination, tucks her head snugly in the space their limbs leave in between.

"It's okay," he tells her, when he notices that she's not letting go, even when Jongkook comes to try and drag his partner away—where the variety gods had failed the producers with her and Sukjin, they served equal compensation by pitting Kwangsoo and Jongkook together without the need for anyone's tampering, "As long as it's funny to everyone else, I honestly don't mind what you guys do to me."

"You're a national treasure, Lee Kwangsoo," she tells him, means it, and her voice warbles dangerously, so she detaches herself from his arm and leaves him to Jongkook's mercy. "Go."

Through the flurry of VJs running to capture Jongkook putting Kwangsoo in a headlock—that's just for show too, because they all know Jongkook loves Kwangsoo the best—she sees Gary looking right at her, faltering an approximate metre behind Lizzy. As if he was thinking of walking over to where she was to join her in step, keeping her company like the faithful Monday boyfriend he is, to hell with the partnering system and their evasion of anything that was supposed to be scripted.

And the two of them—they're as scripted as it gets. She'd forgotten, had become complacent, the truth etched out illegibly in her memory with the passing of years and the heady balm of a warm hand. But she gets it now. She gets it _again_. None of their interactions were real, all synthesized for the sake of ratings, the passing interest of the part of the population that was interested in celebrity relationship gossip, the  _will-they-won't-they_ s that they'd dragged on for too long. Even the bulk of their viewers had clocked in before she did, and now that she's playing at being honest with herself, she can admit that that's really what bothers her the most.

They call her courageous, efficient.  _Ace Jihyo_. But she's just a fool like any other, plunging into dares headfirst when she should have been cautious, should have been timorous. All it's gotten her are a bunch of gold bars that she can't even cash in, and seven years of regression that she doesn't know how to mend.

Just as quickly as she catches his eye, he turns away.  _Divine irony_ , Jisoo's voice rings in her head,  _Poetic justice_. She knows. More than anyone, she knows.

But the game continues, and the show must go on. When she didn't have this, she'd always had her acting, so she puts on the closest thing to a smile that she can muster, psyches herself into braving whatever monster it is that's out there that she needs to face.

 

 

 

 

 

She'd almost believe it was fate, if not for Ha Ha's wink when he stampedes right past her without pulling at her tag, too quick for the cameras to catch. The audience would just think that he'd missed her, dainty figure a blur with the rapid speed of his run, but she realizes soon enough that this was a calculated move, an offensive tactic, and that the title of variety god was really just a misnomer for Ha Donghoon.

She collides with another body, when she ventures out of her hiding spot to check if the coast is clear, and she immediately backs up against a wall to trap the hand already grabbing onto the edge of her tag.

It's Gary, when she tilts her head up to look at her attacker. Of course. Poetic fucking justice right at work.

They stare at each other for a bit, and then for a while. A standstill. His chest heaves, oxygen reserves depleted from running after Ha Ha, and her eyes traitorously flick down to watch its every rise and fall. She only catches herself when she hears his low rasp of, "Jihyo." She shivers.

So much for not being scripted, she thinks acerbically, then looks back up at his face in measured beats. "Oppa."

He looks hurt, she surmises, but only for a moment. Always for a moment. Their entire history, their entire relationship, was just a cluster of moments, tied together by a thin strand of thread, susceptible to break by one snip, a clean, surgical cut. She guesses they'd already snapped; maybe just now, maybe long ago. This is their after, the bifurcation point, two ends created from a broken string. A choice, finally.

"You again?" he says, one of his patented lines, but he meets her eyes gamely when her gaze realigns. "We really are meant to be, huh?"

"Let's not end it like this," she says, her hand creeping up to his back, but he grabs her wrist swiftly by the hand not on her tag and holds it in between their bodies.

"I really don't want to do this," he says with a regretful laugh, faces the cameras for the full effect. "This is our last Monday together."

Their last Monday together should've technically been his last episode, but she makes a decision not to point that out, unsure of what good it can really do. She waits for the rip of a velcro, wants to get this over with, but she's aware that they hadn't shown anything too interesting so far, and that violates the agreement that the cast had made with the PDs. Regardless of what she feels, how it's ended, she knows the fans deserve something better. She doesn't owe it to them, when she's already given so much, but she does owe it to the cast to try, owes it to herself to be honest.

This is what she chooses. "Remember, before? In the rain?" she asks. His fingers on her tag are light, barely skimming, but his hold on her wrist goes taut with her question. "One of the first times we ran?"

"Yeah," he says, voice foggy, but his eyes are clear. "I let you go." So he does.

"You let me go," she repeats, like she's tasting the words, and then decides to just go with the flow. "Why?"

"After all this time, you want to know?" he laughs again, but there's a nervous tinge to the sound. "You know what they say, right? _If you love someone, set them free._ "

Some of the surrounding crew members laugh, but it really wasn't even that funny, in her opinion. She presses on. "Why?"

His brows furrow together. "I already said why."

"Why?" she asks again, and she can see the troubled looks some of the VJs throw each other in the periphery of her vision.

 _Because you'd begged. Because you were dragging my foot to the ground. Because you'd promised to give me your contact number._ She could give him so many things to say, and none of them would even be false, but none of those same answers seem to cross his mind, because all he hisses to her is, "What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing," she says, and she means that, too. "I just want to know why."

"If this is your way of—" he cuts himself off, wrenches his stare away from hers, from the cameras, as if he's shown too much, revealed things that were too personal. He's said nothing, actually—nothing that the viewers could extensively speculate over, at least—but she sees it anyways, feels it; the frustration marring his face, taking residence in the natural troughs of his features; the slackening of his grip on her wrist when she tries to shake him off, tries to land it on the flat plane of his chest; the plea in his eyes, as if this time around, he was the one begging, asking for something far beyond the extents of his reach.

"Come on, Jihyo-yah," he says, much too loud to not be meant for the cameras to focus in on. His smile's back on and his eyes are squinted in lightheartedness, but it was there. For a moment. And that's enough time for her to see what she needed to see. "Let's end this now, yeah? Fairly? I don't think I could take the heartbreak of another betrayal."

He takes her hand off his chest and guides it towards his name tag, and she lets him pull her away from the wall she's been leaning on. "On the count of three," he says. "One," his hands are shaking, "Two," so are hers, "Three." The game continues.

They get into a tussle, both of them trying desperately to dodge out of each other's holds while simultaneously clawing for each other's name tags. At the end of it, she has the advantage, has him pushed down to the floor on his back, her knees straddling his waist, his hands confined within the folds of her legs. His name tag's migrated to his arm, his shirt violently stretched and deformed, and she's already stripped it off halfway, only stops to see what he'd do now, with no options left.

"Alright," he says defeatedly, but that was all for the theatrics. What really matters is the way he smiles—at her, like that day in the  _jjampong_ restaurant, looking and looking and looking, like there were no ends to the view she offers. And she  _knows_ ; this—this was as close to real as she can get; not because he doesn't feel, but because it's as far as he'll allow himself to confess with all the cameras around, with all the millions of pairs of eyes watching with bated breath, trying to crack the code that they themselves couldn't break.

"You win," he says, but he doesn't need to. She already knows she has.

So he lets him go. "Just this once," she says, and releases her clutch from his name tag, "I'll repay my debt."

She stands up unceremoniously, steps over him, pats the dirt off of her pants. She can feel him staring avidly at her back, but she's not worried. "Why?"

She represses a laugh at the role reversal. " _If you love someone, set them free_ ," she reiterates, smiles serenely at the cameras as she completes the adage, " _If they come back, they're yours. If they don't, then they never really were._ "

And then she walks off. He doesn't follow. She turns the corner, climbs the stairs, all the while thinking that the fans can have that, back there, the last seven years. She's already got hers. 

 

 

 

 

 

After she ascends three floors, Jaesuk strolls out of a fire exit. There's a slight scuffle ensued, but they're quite evenly matched, and Jaesuk rips her tag at the same moment she rips his.  _Yoo Jaesuk, out. Song Jihyo, out_. They shake hands, and then they walk affably back to prison, side by side like two old friends catching up on lost time. 

"You're here?" Ha Ha asks, visibly confused. "But Gary-hyung—" he halts, as if recalling that what happened between the two of them was a master plan that wasn't at all concocted by him, and he leans back in his chair while shaking his head in disbelief. "Wow. I honestly thought you would win this last time. That's always been your type of luck."

"Guess I've run out," she says, and then sits on the empty seat beside Joongki, accepts the water bottle that a crew member passes down to her. Waits.

In the end, it's between Gary and Jongkook. Kwangsoo makes a fuss as he's dragged into the room, clamouring for revenge that he says he'll achieve, even post-show, but he quiets down when the TV screen in front of them turns on, only to start screaming about something else entirely.

"What's this?" Jongkook's voice says, through the speakers, because there are suddenly walls erecting from all four of their sides. "Kwangsoo, shut _up_."

"He can hear us?" Kwangsoo says, hand flying to his mouth. "What is this?"

 _It's a gladiator style battle_ , the robotic voiceover says, _a fight to the death between fate's last handpicked soldier and the Running Man kingdom's most vicious tiger._

Everyone groans. "That's not even funny," Jongkook says, tone unamused, but his lips are pursed, and they can tell he's trying not to laugh. "Isn't this unethical?"

 _We have an Ethics Board_ , is all the voiceover says, as if that made it okay, before finishing with, _B_ _egin_.

They walk around in circles, sizing each other up, before Gary eventually sits down, cross-legged, on the floor. "This is so unfair," he says, petulant, and crosses his arms over his chest as well. "How am I supposed to beat him like this?"

"Come on," Jongkook says, moving closer towards him, tugging at his arm. A trick within a trick. "It's the last episode! Put up some fight!"

Gary instantly uses the connection to try and tackle him to the ground, but Jongkook bolts, a feral grin stretching across his face. "That's the spirit," he says, and then he charges.

It's kind of brutal, even she has to admit, but it also delivers on entertainment and some much needed nostalgia. Gary feigns surrender about eight times before he finally sees an opening, yanks Jongkook's name tag off of his tattered shirt with a melodious little  _riiiiiiiiiip_.

"Kang Gary, Kang Gary!" Kwangsoo and Ha Ha chant loudly in unison, arms rested over each other's shoulders, and Gary feeds off of it, steps one foot ostentatiously over Jongkook's back like a conqueror finding land, flexes his arms up to the sky as he whoops in victorious glee.

"Kang Gary," she joins in on the chorus, and maybe she imagines it, but that's when he really preens, shines brighter under the ambient lighting with the polish of her voice. It's drowned out by the others', radiant jubilance no match for the raucous boom unique to the men around her, but that's not really the point.

The point is: she's always been on his side, regardless of whether or not he's heard, of whether or not she's known all along.

 

 

 

 

 

Before they rip their final tag off, Jaesuk asks each one of them to say a few words to the viewers who have stuck with them from episode one to episode three-hundred and forty.

She's already crying before Jaesuk even finishes saying it. "It's been difficult," she starts, when her turn comes, almost indecipherable through her hiccuping of air, "But there's still no other place I would've rather been at every Monday for the last seven years." She looks around, watches every single one of them rub at their eyes, and a laugh bubbles up her throat with her next words, bittersweet. "Mostly, there's no other group of people I'd rather have spent my time with. Thank you for watching, and I hope you support us in all of our future projects."

The rest of the line says their own individual speeches, and then suddenly her hand's grasped on a corner of a near child-sized name tag, eight others scattered along the margins, and she prepares herself for one more task as everyone on set counts them down to send-off.

"Be gentle," Dongwan warns, back on for one more episode, decked out in the standard-issued Running Man tracksuit, the tag securely stuck to his back, the show's volunteer mascot through and through.

He's brought down to the ground anyways, from the sheer force of nine power sources—Jongkook alone counted for five—but he's smiling up at them as he takes Sukjin's outstretched hand, walks right behind them with the rest of the crew as the cameras pan to a shot of all their backs, name tags reinstated for their last walk out of the building. All together, like they had promised.

_Running Man, out. Running Man, out._

 

 

 

 

 

It happens at the after-party, like how these things always tended to do. Ha Ha's booked a four-story bar, and the main cast takes top floor, where she sips on the drinks proffered to her until she develops a slight buzz, enough that her body's core temperature rises, but not enough to partake in any regrettable behaviour.

Like dancing on the mini-stage at the centre of the room, when Ha Ha starts picking on random victims, already drunk on five shots of tequila and a glass of something much harder, judging from the strong scent of ethanol that she smells when he passes by her aisle. She hightails it out of there and relocates outside, to a small nook at the end of the hallway, sits down on the ground and feels the bass of the music reverberate against her skin.

"Hey," someone says, and she knows it's him without looking; if not for his voice alone, then for the simple fact that it always seems to be him that finds her, in hiding or not. "Party getting too wild for the grannies?"

"Don't you start with the age jokes, old man," she scoffs, and his laugh gets progressively louder as he takes another step closer towards her. "You're really not one to talk."

"True enough," he says, and he crouches down beside her, his knee bumping hers when he moves to take a seat. "I guess we're both getting a little too old for this."

She makes a small noise of affirmation, doesn't say anything more. The succeeding silence isn't unbearable, but it's definitely awkward. She transfers her weight to the other side of her body, leans her elbow more on her right leg, and the action has their arms brushing against each other, the fine hairs lining her flesh prickling at the friction.

But he doesn't flinch away. And neither does she.

This can only last for so long, she knows, so she opens her mouth, even without the basis of what she wants to say, how to say it, but he thinks faster than her and ends up saying something first, "I'm only human."

She blinks. She doesn't know what she was expecting, coming from him, but it wasn't that. "What?"

"I'm—" he forestalls, reshuffles his gait, coughs surreptitiously into the collar of his jacket. Funny how when the cameras are off, she thinks, shut away from the two of them forever, that's when he starts losing confidence in himself, in the words he's always been proficient at commandeering. "What you said? You mean it?"

She's said a lot of things, these past couple of months, but she knows exactly what he means without the need for clarification. "When have I ever said anything I didn't mean?"

"You're right," he says, rubs at his knees, fingers catching on the distressed slits on the material of his jeans. "Miss Mong Ji, never one to mince her words."

No one says anything for another long while. She repositions herself uncomfortably, knocks ankles with him this time, and then she tries again, trusts in the alcohol churning in her stomach, spurring her on to become just that slightest bit bolder. "I like you, Kang Gary."

"Thanks," is all he says, droll, and her hand flies up reflexively to slap his arm, "Ow, _fuck_ —I forget how strong you are sometimes."

"You deserved that," she huffs out, a tad self-righteous, but then his answer sinks in, and the doubt starts its rapid march back into her brain. "What's holding you back?"

"A lot," he says, doesn't expand. "I liked you, in the beginning."

"I know," she says, and it's some sort of relief, but that's not what they're talking about right now. "And now you don't."

"It's not that," he rebukes, and she chews on the inside of her cheek, scared of becoming too hopeful for something that hasn't been validated, something that maybe wasn't even really there. "I'm just—how can I be sure? Even now, I'm trying so hard not to crane my neck to check if there are any cameras around to catch you say this on tape."

Everything suddenly clicks into place, like the puzzle's finally formed, transitioning into more than the sum of its parts for a unified picture. All these years, she'd thought she was the only one being played, the only one out of the loop, but the cameras had messed him up just as much too. They were in this together. They always had been. Something inexplicably comforting engulfs her, relaxes her from fingertips to toes, and she feels like she finally completely, irrevocably, indestructibly  _gets_ it.

"I got over you," he recommences, but she refrains from jumping to any hasty conclusions. She's willing to just listen, for now, has enough faith in him to believe that he won't be using any of what he says as weapons against her. "But I guess that even when I'm over you, I'm still really not. Does that make sense?"

"No," she says honestly, and he laughs.

"Yeah," he says, nods for a solid minute along with it. She wonders, idly, if maybe he was drunk too, but the vulnerability on his face when he turns his head to look at her is as sober as she can recognize. "Not to me, either. But it's what I've kept thinking, ever since I left," he breathes out shakily, through his nose, before picking up where he left off, "When you told me you'd miss me. And then I started missing you, right there, even when you were still right beside me. Which didn't make much sense as well, but it made just enough to make me realize that I was fucked."

She knots her fingers together, feels the acceleration of her heartbeat from the press of her thumbs. She listens on, even when the thrum of her blood threatens to overtake her ability to hear.

"I'm not really that old," he continues, "I'm being serious, I'm not—come on, don't laugh," he reproaches, when she snickers snidely, but the quiver of his lip upwards belies any sign that she's truly offended him, "I'm not. But I'm not young, either. And I feel like if I did—" he pauses again, scratches behind his ear for this particular instance's derailing technique, "I don't even know why I said the age thing, because it honestly doesn't even matter. If I let myself go for you again, that'd be it, you know? I'm not even trying to be dramatic, I swear, but whether we work out or not, how young or how old that leaves me, that's probably going to be it for me.

"I'm not like you," he says, "I'm a coward," he says, "I need to know how much exactly it's worth for me to risk that," he says, "I need to know that it won't just be another show."

"You're an idiot," is what she says to that, "Kang Gary, you absolute fucking idiot."

His mouth opens for a retort, affronted, but he's had his turn. Now, it was solely hers. "You think I'd waited all these years for the public voyeurism of that show to end just so I could, what? Have you as a trophy husband right after? Display you around like a bar of gold?" she sneers disdainfully, sets a hand against the wall beside her to help push her off the ground as she stands up. "I have no need for that. If that's what you think of me, then I'm fine with you not liking me back."

She's right back down in a flash, her thighs sprawled over his, her forearm captured loosely in his hand, hanging limply in front of them, which is just as well for an appendage that had betrayed her exit.

"That's not what I think of you," he says, voice low with the gravity of his statement, and her breath stays in arrest when he skates the hand on her arm up to her neck, cards his fingers delicately through the artificial waves of her hair, "And it's a little too late on the other front, no? Even if you told me to, I don't think I'd be able to stop."

He draws her head closer, or she dips it a little forward, herself; whatever it is, whoever makes the first move, the only thing she can really focus on is his breath on her lips, so close that he's practically mouthing his next question across the small expanse of skin, "Are you telling me to stop?"

And her—she's only human, too. "No," she says, and then she kisses him, no timidity as she licks into his mouth, no impending sense of trepidation as she locks him against her with a squeeze of her calves around his back, because she'd won, he'd told her just as much, and this was the prize she'd set her eyes on the second she realized that she was playing a game, the second she realized that there was nothing else for her to bet on. _This_ —this was it. _He_ was it, just as much as he'd claimed her to be his last, as much as he'd let her, for the rest of their lives.

"Jihyo," he groans, guttural, right in between kisses, when her hips start rolling instinctively against his, " _Jihyo_ —not here."

"Then anywhere," she tells him, latches onto his jaw, his cheek, his earlobe, until she reaches back to where she started, sucks fervently on his bottom lip to mark the genesis of a new rotation. "I'd let you take me anywhere," _Even for the cameras, now. Even then_ , she thinks, just to prove it, but she doesn't get to say it because he already has her covered, swallows her words and her moans when he catches her mouth abruptly for another kiss.

 

 

 

 

 

Which is how they end up at his studio, just seven blocks down from the bar, his driving jerky, his knuckles on the steering wheel whitened, as she places a hand on his thigh and caresses the rigid muscle, careful not to go too high up, because she's feverish, but she also doesn't want to die. Not before they do this, at least, and they were already so, so goddamned close, so she retracts her hand and tucks it safely on her lap as he presses his foot down harder on the pedal of the gas.

Kang Gary, as it turns out, is as romantic a lover as he is a writer; carries her from the threshold of his door to the sofa, hands unyieldingly fixed at the back of her thighs as he lays her down gently along the couch; undresses her unhurriedly, takes off one piece of clothing at a time, replaces cotton and lace and denim with warm lips and hands and teeth the very moment her skin comes into contact with the frigid air of his studio. She shudders, but it's not from the cold, cries out in a zealous mantra of  _Gary, Gary, Gary_ , when he separates her legs and parts her open with a smooth glide of his tongue, slick and hot and so terribly fucking _good_.

"Go slow," he murmurs into her ear, when she sinks down onto his cock, sheathes him to the very base of it with one brisk move. His nails burrow into her hips, veins on his arms and neck looking strained from trying for too much control—she knows he wants this,  _craves_ this, just as much as she does—but she whimpers her consent anyways, weakened to his husk of, "Slow, baby," the endearment scorching itself across her mind, coiling around the desire brimming in the pits of her gut, "I want to see you when you come apart, want to see every bit of you when I fuck you."

And that's how they go, languid and tortuous as he hits up into her, sucks one of her nipples into his mouth to lave his tongue against the bud before rocking it in between his teeth, has her stifling a scream into the crook of his neck, scraping bruises onto the skin on his back, paints it red like the carvings of masks littered across his wall. He goes slow, slower, slowest, so slow it's _painful_ , her whole body driving up to a peak with no path down in sight, but the leisurely pace he leads allows for him to fuck into her much deeper, more thoroughly, and it makes up for the torture of the longest build she's ever worked for in her life when she almost blacks out from the added touch of pleasure that his fingers leave on her clit.

"Please," she cries desperately, when he's slipped most of the way out, elongating the time it takes to thrust back in with each turn. "More.  _More_."

"Jihyo," he says, like he's asking, so she answers with, "Faster," answers with a forceful grind down his length when he still refuses to slip all of himself in.

" _Jihyo_ ," he hisses, and she does it again, and again, and again, until he finally gets it, finally rids himself of whatever notions he has of having to be a gentleman to her here—he's waited for her, she understands, is probably waiting for her right now, still, but she's  _waited_ for him, too; she wants him sudden like the flow of his rapping, wants him committed like the dedication he gives to writing his songs, wants him to come undone right with her because they've been waiting for it for years, waiting for all of this and more, waiting for it apart and waiting for it together.

"Please," she writhes, and he pulls her in closer, his thrusts growing sharper with each keen of her voice, " _There, there,_ " and he mouths her name down her neck when she quakes in her release, grunts out as he comes along to the whir of her body, _Jihyo, Jihyo, Jihyo._

" _Embraced in your clean arms, my dirty soul's being washed_ ," he raps softly into her ear, much later, when he's wrestled a blanket from behind the sofa and draped it around the two of them, pleats tucked in a disarray between the twine of their legs. Her other ear's pressed to his chest, right where his heart should lie buried, and the regular thudding of his pulse lends a complimentary beat to the words he waxes in the wind-down. " _Let's stay like this longer_."

"If you're going to sing me songs, don't sing the ones that aren't about me," she mumbles lazily, not entirely facetious, but her neck bends to follow the sound of his voice anyways.

"Jealous?" he challenges, and she feels the vibration of each syllable through the touch of his torso against hers.

"Mhm," she confirms, just a soft whine, but she likes that he tightens his arms around the tail of her back right after. Likes that they can do this, without being watched. Likes that the feeling it comes from, the feeling it produces, is real. "I want to have you, Kang Gary. Only me."

"What Mong Ji wants, Mong Ji gets," he says, and she feels the press of his lips against her forehead, feels the pads of his fingers sweeping her hair away from her face even as she's three-quarters into sleep. "Only you, then. I guess I could learn to write to that."

"Asshole," she says through a piercing yawn, "As if you don't already love me."

He chuckles. "Ace Jihyo, always right."

She sets her mouth over the tattoo on his arm, closes her eyes, thinks, before falling asleep: who am I to talk? It's not as if she wasn't already, either.

 

 

 

 

 

Her mind promptly registers two things when she opens her eyes the following morning: 1) it was still fucking freezing in Gary's studio, even with the sun blasting through his windows in one mighty ray like it is, and 2) Gary isn't lying beside her like he was last night, isn't even anywhere within the room, gone from within the ranges of her hearing and sight.

But she has a feeling. And she lets it lead her, because she hadn't conjured up all the luck that everyone uses to power her myth without attuning herself to the finer hints, the details that matter, first and foremost. Kang Gary, she's gathered, is all music and lyrics at heart, overflowing with rhythm and melody with a clasp of a pen, a turn of a night, a touch of a woman who makes him think of words he'd never looked to define before.

The thought that that could be her, the woman whom he freely wrote songs for, now, has her pulse tripping up on itself even with the grounded padding of her naked feet.

"You need to get your heater fixed," she tells him first thing when she enters his recording booth, fitting her chin into the juncture of his neck, arms wrapped around his shoulders from behind him. "Even I can't sleep in that kind of cold."

"Heater's working just fine, though," he replies distractedly, still eyeing the piece of paper in front of him, the letters and the strikeouts and the underlines and the blotted dots where he's left his pen to press too hard on it, before swivelling his chair around to pull her down on his lap, heats her bare thighs right up with the even stroke of his hands, "It's working right now, isn't it?"

"You're relentless," she mutters, but her skin's on fire and her heart seems to be smack in the middle of its furnace. "You better not be singing metaphors about how I'm the coal of your life, either."

"Well, shit," he says, as if he's been found out, but the smirk he wears when he toys with the edges of the shirt she's thrown on unknowingly before going out to find him—his, because things do happen the same way twice, and switching clothes other than caps is just an inevitable type of its reincarnation—is nothing but self-congratulatory. "I thought it was a good concept."

"It's not," she rejects, with a fix of an easy glare, before curiosity reigns and tempts her to peek over his shoulder at the scratched up music sheet he's been working on, "What have you written?"

"Just a couple of lines," he says, obviously playing it down, because she can see the whole page filled up, the size of his writing almost requiring a magnifying glass to be read. "But I keep getting stuck on some parts, because I feel like it hasn't happened enough for me to write about it naturally, you know?"

"What is it?" she asks, innocently piqued, but the things he whispers in her ear as answer makes her feel as filthy as she is shamefully, inordinately turned on. " _Kang Gary—_ "

"What?" he says, smile already embedding itself into the dips of her collarbone, fingers already snaking ticklishly up her sides underneath his shirt, "You asked."

"That's not— _oh_ ," his thumb grazes faintly at her nipple, and she arches her back towards it in response, has him laughing below his breath even as he moves to cup her whole breast in a hand to knead at her flesh, "You still have—writing, a lot—your album— _god_ , seriously—"

"It can wait," he murmurs decidedly, and kisses her quiet. "You come first." And she does.

 

 

 

 

 

He doesn't much get to the music part—unless her loud moan that they'd accidentally recorded when he'd sat her beside the soundboards and knocked on a few buttons as he canted his hips tirelessly against hers counted for something, which she highly doubts and definitely doesn't want for his producers to wholly appreciate—but he does jot down more lyrics, in the aftermath, and ends up finishing the entire piece with the creation of a bridge in between two verses for the finale of the song.

"What should I call it?" he asks her, index finger lightly tracing the characters he's written across her stomach. "The muse gets final say."

"Poetic justice," she says, doesn't need to think on it, and she starts laughing uncontrollably at how things work out in the end. Hers was a long test of retribution, and somehow, miraculously, she's finally passed.

"You really are nuts," he says, when she only laughs louder at his bewildered expression. "But that sounds good.  _Poetic Justice_ ," he echoes, juggling it around with the lines he'd already penned beforehand. "You sure you weren't made for music instead of acting?"

"I was made for you to make award-winning rap albums about," she says, half-kidding, and gets a poke to her ribs in retaliation. "Which you better."

"Now you're just being arrogant," he grumbles, but he nuzzles his head closer to hers, voice dimmed to a lulled cadence by the sweep of her fingers through his scalp. " _Poetic Justice_. It's fitting, huh?"

She says nothing, but she agrees. Of course. Because she knows. Because she's lived it. And she's realized, if this is going to be how _they_ live it, lying pressed together in his minuscule leather couch, him rapping her songs with her in sight, her in mind, them making true what had always been a sham, then she's more than alright with letting it sustain her until it's run out, until something else can flourish to give them new breath.

For right now, she can get used to this.

 

 

 

 

 

(The last thing she receives in her mail before she moves out of her apartment—because he'd received a lot of gold for being the show's final winner, and she'd reminded him that most of the reason why that happened was because she'd let him escape, and then he'd offered that she could always just live with him if she missed her gold that much, and this is now just the logical conclusion to that discussion—is a sealed box, stamped for the classification of having to be sent via priority mail.

It's his new album, when she slices off all the tape with her cutter and opens the lid painstakingly with her hand.

 _To MC Song_ , she reads, after she's followed the instructions he'd written on a purple post-it and tacked on the cover of the CD case, directing her to flip to the dedications page inside the album jacket,  _Now I won't have to tell people twenty years down the road that the songs on my album aren't about my unrequited love for you, since you've righted all of that._

 _you guys left the party that night to fuck, didnt you?????_ is the first text that alights her phone when the proclaimed time for his physical album release chimes on her wall clock, and she laughs as Ha Ha tries to work it all out through the science of an airtight phone message inquisition,  _you bastards missed the last toast!!!_ _you guys are sly as hell, seriously...._

 _congrats tho_ , is his final text to round the whole thing up, and she knows he's sincere because Ha Ha always prefaces hearty sentiments with bouts of simulated anger,  _now i wont have to feel guilty about leaving you to marry go eun anymore_.

 _i'm really happy for you, noona_ , is Kwangsoo's input, short and sweet, and her heart swells so large, near pathologic, when all of the others send in their messages of support, delighted that they were rooting for the two of them even after the end of the show, after failed ratings and over eighty thousand miles ran and the close of a camera aperture shut. Like cast mates, like seven years worth of variant relationships, on and off screen. Like family.

"Is this okay?" Gary asks, the first thing he says when she picks up his call, careful and apprehensive, as if the ink of her response hasn't already dried to permanence in their books.

"It's okay," she says, doesn't turn off her TV when the gossip segment of the news channel she's watching flashes their new breaking headline:  _Kang Gary of hip hop duo LeeSsang alludes to a confirmation of his relationship with actress Song Jihyo on his new album_ , "This is okay."

Because it is. Because they'll have to make official announcements soon, and it'll be another circus show, a different level of pandemonium to incite altogether, but it doesn't make a difference to her.

As far as she's concerned, Kang Gary is the only scene she'll believe.)

 

 

 

 

  


End file.
